[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  “As many times as you can manage,” Nixe said, leaving it at that.

  “So you’d never let us leave?”

  “We don’t get visitors down here as often as we’d like. If another group comes, we might be convinced that we could do without you.”

  “How often does that happen?”

  “On average? About once every few years, maybe.”

  “Forget it,” said Dunk. The others murmured in agreement with him. “We can make it without your help.”

  Nixe rolled her eyes. “We’ll see how you feel when you’ve gone without fresh water for a few days.”

  With a synchronised flip of their tails, the fishwomen disappeared. They flung themselves back into the wall of water, and it swept them away.

  “How come we can’t do that?” Guillermo asked.

  “Perhaps because we need to breathe,” Enojada said.

  Guillermo smirked as he looked at the wreckage all around them. “I don’t need to breathe that bad. I’d rather die of drowning than of thirst.”

  Dirk toed the snoring Getrunken. “I think he feels the same way.”

  Dunk stared up at the wall of whirling water that encircled them. He scanned it as far around as he could see, from foot to rim. He knew there had to be a way, he just had to find it.

  If they could work quickly, maybe they could build a catapult out of the wreckage on the whirlpool’s floor. Then they could fling themselves up over the rim. Landing in the water wouldn’t hurt too badly, but then they’d have to deal with the great, sucking problem that had got them into this trouble in the first place: the maelstrom.

  Dunk stared at the whirlpool’s walls until his eyes ran dry. All sorts of junk spun about in the zooming water: oars, bits of masts, planks from various parts of a ship, barrels that still looked whole. If they could figure out a way to knock a few of those barrels onto dry land, they might find something that could give them a couple more days at least.

  Then Dunk spotted something strange. One of the largest pieces of jetsam, something he’d mistaken for a hunk of a mast, seemed to be hanging in one place rather than getting swept along with the rest. Other bits of wreckage glanced off it from time to time, but it stayed right where it was, swaying about, but only in place.

  “What is it?” asked Spinne.

  Dunk strode over to the chunk of wood, keeping his eyes on it the entire time. As he walked, he clapped M’Grash on the back, and the ogre got up from where he’d been picking his nose and fell in step behind Spinne and Dunk.

  As Dunk neared the piece of wood, he noticed it had a length of rope tied around it in a massive, solid knot. That had to be what was keeping the thing in place. What could it be attached to, though, for that to happen, Dunk wondered.

  Then Dunk heard something coming from the wood. At first, he thought it was a trick of the whirlpool, the noise the random bits of crud made as they bounced off what now clearly resembled a tree. Then Dunk finally made out some words in the noise.

  “Damn this bloody whirlpool to hell! I’ve had more than enough bloody water for one life.”

  “Edgar!” Dunk said. He turned and shouted back over his shoulder at the other surviving Hackers. “It’s Edgar!”

  Dunk sprinted towards the treeman, with Spinne close behind. M’Grash overtook the thrower in a few long strides and started shouting the treeman’s name over and over again. “Edgar! Edgar! Edgar!”

  The treeman had clearly been trapped in the currents. They just needed to find a way to get him free. Dunk set his mind to figuring the problem out.

  First, they’d have to see if Edgar was hurt. Then, they’d have to know how he’d ended up with that rope around his trunk. It might take them a while to assess the situation, but it would mean the least amount of trauma for Edgar.

  M’Grash had other ideas. The ogre ran straight up to the treeman, still shouting “Ed-gar! Ed-gar!”

  When M’Grash reached Edgar, he reached into the water and wrapped his massive hands around the treeman’s trunk. Then he leaned back and pulled.

  Edgar’s face leapt out of the water. “Get me damn well out of this bloody thing!” he said.

  M’Grash reached for the rope tying Edgar down, but the treeman head butted him away. “Don’t you bloody touch that!” he said. “That’s the only thing keeping me from being sucked away.”

  “Pull with me,” Dunk said to M’Grash, who’d almost left off helping entirely, after Edgar’s assault. The ogre joined him with only the barest of pressure.

  Together with Spinne, they yanked on Edgar, but they could only get him about halfway out of the water before he was sucked back in. As the others made their way to where Edgar hung suspended in the water, they lent their strength to the cause. Every survivor was soon pulling on some part of the treeman, and together they made good progress. It still wasn’t enough.

  Dunk figured it out first. They were having trouble because every member of the team was pulling in a different direction at different times. They needed to work as a team, to get everyone to pull in the same direction at once.

  “On my count,” Dunk shouted. “We all pull to the right.”

  Dunk grabbed Edgar as tightly as he could. The waters of the ocean seemed colder down here than on the surface, and Dunk knew it wouldn’t be long before his fingers became useless. In the meantime, he had a job to do.

  “On three!” he said. “One, two, three!”

  Everyone pulled at once, and Edgar popped from the water like a cork from a bottle. The others all tumbled backward under his weight, and several Hackers, including Dunk, would have been crushed if not for M’Grash. The ogre caught the treeman in both hands and strained under his team-mate’s dripping wet weight. Then he tipped over to one side and set Edgar on his feet.

  “Thanks,” Edgar said down at the ogre from his vantage point. Dunk wondered if he could see beyond the whirlpool’s rim from up there, or if someone in the treeman’s upper reaches might.

  Spinne threw her arms around the tree and gave him a hug. “We thought we’d lost you,” she said.

  “Not going to be that bloody lucky yet,” said Edgar. “I’ve got more than a few rings left in my heartwood. I could be playing Blood Bowl long after you’re dead.”

  “We might be closer to that death than you think,” said Dunk.

  “Balderdash,” said Edgar. “You can’t be dead yet. I was sent here to rescue you, and I’m not going to quit until you are all safe.

  “Sent?” asked Dunk. “By who?”

  “Mad Jonnen, of bloody course. Where do you think I got this rope?”

  Dunk reached out and touched the rope, still bound around the treeman’s trunk. You mean this is attached to the Fanatic?”

  “The other end of it, at bloody least,” said Edgar. “All you have to do is climb right back along it, and you should be fine.”

  “We would have to be awfully strong swimmers to make that happen,” said Guillermo. “I used to dive for pearls as a child, but I do not think I can force my way through a maelstrom.”

  “Bloody cowards,” Edgar said. “Give it a bloody shot. What have you to lose? A miserable death?”

  Enojada laughed. “I’ll try it,” she said.

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Spinne. “You’ll be swept right back here in a waterlogged mess.”

  The Amazon took that as a challenge. She put a hand on the rope still hanging taut from Edgar’s waist and ran it along the line as she charged headlong into the water.

  Enojada disappeared into the vertical waves, which grabbed her and sucked her away as if she were a child that had decided to go for a ride on a stampeding ogre’s back. Her grip on the rope around Edgar hadn’t held at all. Dunk followed her progress along the wall for about forty yards before she disappeared behind a rock. When she reappeared, she had fallen lower than before, and a moment later the maelstrom spat her back out onto the sand, soggy and exhausted.

  Guillermo ran to check on the Amazon. A moment later, a thumb
s-up from him indicated that, while she might feel awful now, she would be fine.

  “I told her,” said Spinne. “We can’t afford to lose any more people.”

  “I agree,” said Dunk. He spoke to Edgar. “How far away is the Fanatic?”

  The treeman scratched the bark under his wide and craggy mouth. “She’s anchored about fifty yards out. If we’d been smart, we’d have done the bloody same, although I suppose a tiny ship like ours might have been doomed anyhow.”

  Dunk raised an eyebrow at M’Grash. “What do you say, buddy?”

  “No,” Spinne said, “it’s too dangerous. It’s not like getting spun out of the whirlpool’s face. You try that, and it’ll suck you all the way down.”

  “I survived it once.”

  “And how many of us didn’t?” Spinne put her hands together to plead with Dunk. “It’s insane. Don’t do it.”

  Dunk took her by the hand. “If I had a better idea, if any of us did, don’t you think I’d try that first? Besides, we’ve done this in games before, and we’re still here.”

  “You’re not immortal, or invulnerable.”

  Dunk gave her a lopsided grin, and started to strip to his shorts. “I know. I have the scars to prove it.”

  “Let me go instead,” she said. “I’m lighter.”

  Dunk considered this for a moment. “I’m the stronger swimmer. I have the best chance of making it.”

  “Can’t someone else go?”

  Dunk scanned the faces of the others. He’d been through hell, literally, with most of them. Outside of the rookies, whom he simply didn’t know that well, they would all have risked their lives for him. He was ready to do the same.

  “With Pegleg gone, I’m the majority owner of the Hackers. It should be me.”

  Spinne blinked back tears and leaned forward to give Dunk a kiss. Naked, but for his shorts, he let it linger as long as he dared, and then turned and walked up to the ogre and the treeman.

  13

  Edgar and M’Grash had already made a basket for Dunk between their branches and hands, and lowered it for him to step in. He climbed into the basket and gave his two giant friends a nod. They lifted him up and held him between them for a moment.

  “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be. Let’s give it a shot.”

  “Pegleg’s fine, by the way. He’s waiting on the bloody ship.”

  Dunk stared at the treeman. “You might have mentioned that beforehand. How about the others?”

  Edgar craned his head around for a last look. “Assuming you have everyone here, I count a total of thirteen of us, including that bloody reporter and the halfling.”

  “Slick and Lästiges are alive?” Dunk shouted, as if the words would only be true if he said them loud enough.

  A whoop went up from below. Dunk didn’t have to look down to know it came from Dirk.

  Dunk had counted nine in the maelstrom before Edgar had arrived. With the treeman, Pegleg, Lästiges and Slick, that made thirteen. That meant Anima, Roja, Bereit, Ciotola, Linson, and Anfäger were gone, six good people drowned and dead, plus, Dr. Pill, one cranky, old elf.

  Dunk’s grief tempered his joy at finding four of their number still alive. They were down to only nine players, short of what they needed to field a proper Blood Bowl team. They’d been in such straights before, but they’d rarely seemed so desperate.

  “You got something in your bloody eye?”

  Dunk wiped his face and shook his head. “No, why?”

  “That’s what you humans always say when you start bloody leaking from your face over something.”

  “I’m ready,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  “On three,” said Edgar. He stared into M’Grash’s eyes. “Got that?”

  “One, three!” said the ogre.

  “No, it’s one, two, three. Got that?”

  “Three! Three, three, three, three, three!”

  Edgar shook his head. “Close e-bloody-nough.”

  Dunk caught Spinne’s eye. “I’ll signal you when I’m on board the ship.”

  “And if we don’t hear from you, or see your… you?”

  Dunk shrugged. “Then I’ll trust your judgement, because mine will have failed.”

  Edgar and M’Grash swung Dunk back once, twice. On the third swing, Edgar yelled, “Three!” And the two of them hurled Dunk high into the sky, up over the edge of the whirlpool.

  From his vantage point, Dunk could see the Fanatic in the distance, but not too far away. Then he reached the zenith of his arc through the air, and the swirling waters rushed up at him from below.

  Dunk hollered like a maniac as he sailed through the air, and he flailed his arms and legs all over the place. He wanted to give the people on the Fanatic as much of a chance as possible to see him.

  He hit the water hard, as if diving from a cliff. It smacked into him and made every bit of exposed skin sting.

  Dunk had gasped a large breath before he landed, and he resisted the urge to let the impact knock it all out of him. Instead, he fought towards the surface as hard and fast as he could, crawling his way through the water.

  The current tried to pull him back and under every step of the way, and his lungs felt like they might burst if he didn’t breathe soon. Still he fought on, unwilling to surrender, no matter how much easier, and tempting, that might have been.

  As his head broke the surface, Dunk gasped for air. He kept swimming as hard as he could, though, knowing that he couldn’t relax while he remained trapped in the relentless current. He shouted for help as soon as he could, and the people gathered at the Fanatic’s gunwales waved at him in acknowledgement.

  A moment later, someone tossed a length of rope from the ship. Dunk knew that if he failed to grab this lifeline, he was as good as dead, and he swam for it hard.

  Try as he might, the rope remained out of reach. He could hear the people on the galleon cheering him on, but he couldn’t reach them. He swam as hard and fast as he could, but it was no use.

  As a Blood Bowl player, Dunk was in the best shape of his life, better than almost anyone he knew who didn’t play the game. Still, he struggled just to keep his head above water, and he could feel himself being slowly pulled backward by the unforgiving current. The roar of the whirlpool grew louder, not softer, as he tried to swim away from it, and the end of the rope grew farther away.

  More than anything else, Dunk needed a moment to catch his breath, although he knew he’d never get it. He wondered how much longer he could hold out. Should he keep at it, hoping for a crosscurrent to give him the break he needed? Or should he give up while he still had some strength and try to navigate his way to the bottom of the maelstrom once more?

  Dunk knew he had no good choices, and he couldn’t pick one of the bad ones. If he didn’t do something soon, the choice would be made for him, and perhaps in a way he wouldn’t survive.

  Just as he decided to give up and take his chances with the whirlpool, while he still had the strength to hold his breath, Dunk felt something brush against his leg. It was slick and cold as the sea, and it had scales.

  Aboard the Sea Chariot, he and the others had often traded stories about monsters from the deep: giant squid, man-eating sharks, giant jellyfish called man-o’-wars, and worse. He hadn’t given them much credence until he’d seen the gigantic sea serpent help pull the Sea Chariot down into the maelstrom. He’d pushed any thoughts of that creature, or any of its murderous cousins, out of his mind when he’d volunteered to try to reach the Fanatic.

  Now, they all came rushing back at him. Panic gripped his heart, and he renewed his efforts to reach the rope that represented safety, at least from the creatures of the deep that he couldn’t see. He thought about swimming towards the whirlpool, but that would put him underwater for sure, and closer to the creature below.

  Then a pair of arms slipped around him from behind. Dunk would have screamed if he hadn’t forced his face forward in surprise and taken in a lungful of seawater instead.
He thrust his head back up and started to cough it out, all the while trying to struggle against whatever it was that had him in its grasp.

  As he expelled the water in his chest, he realised the arms that held him were pushing him up out of the water, not pulling him down. He looked down and saw that they were slender and tipped with delicate hands. Then, when he felt naked breasts against his bare back, he knew what had happened.

  “Hold still,” the fishwoman said into his ear, the rows of teeth behind those beautiful lips just inches from his flesh. “You’re slippery.”

  Dunk stopped fighting, and the fishwoman wrapped her arms around him tighter. “All right,” he said. “I give up. Bring me back.”

  He heard an amused laugh. “Is that what you want? You seemed so determined to reach that ship.”

  Dunk blinked, confused. He coughed the last of the water from his lungs. “No. I mean, yes. I do want to get to the ship, but I thought—”

  “That I would drag you back down in the maelstrom?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I considered it. That’s what Nixe would want me to do.”

  “You don’t always do what Nixe wants?”

  “I’m a fishwoman, not a soldier, silly man.”

  Dunk peered over his shoulder, and her gorgeous face was right there. All he could think of was Spinne and how much she wouldn’t like to see him like this. On the other hand, he was sure she wouldn’t want him to drown either.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  “They followed Nixe back to our home. She said she wanted to give you and the other men some time to consider your situation. They all left before the walking tree showed up.”

  “But you stayed behind?”

  “Uh-huh.” She held him tighter. “I was watching you.”

  The rope drifted closer, almost in reach now.

  “Ah. Thanks.”

  “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

  Dunk stiffened in the fishwoman’s arms. If he denied it, he might anger her with such a clear lie. If he admitted to it, she might decide to drown him.

  “You don’t have to answer,” the fishwoman said, disappointment rising in her voice. “It’s obvious.”